Have you ever eaten ice cream that tasted so far from the delicious creaminess of Häagen-Dazs that you begin to wonder how it can even be called ice cream? It cant! Congratulations, you have just discovered a very interesting regulation that the FDA calls a “Standard of Identity.” A standard of identity for a food product is the legal terminology used in the United States for a government regulation which establishes the ingredients and amount of those ingredients that a food must contain before it can be labeled in a certain way. The criteria are issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or by the Food and Drug Administration. In general, standards of identity are intended to protect consumers from economic deception, i.e., from purchasing meat, dairy, bread etc, in which inferior ingredients have been substituted for more valuable ones.  Food Standards are a necessity to both consumers and the food industry. Without standards, you could be eating rice cream thinking you are eating ice cream, and POW! Your highly anticipated bedtime snack leaves you in the dumps.

Next time you are at the grocery store and you see a bottle closely resembling Ketchup but it says “Catsup,” remember that even though imitation is the best form of flattery, it just doesn’t cut it.

Keep the standard high.